


A Happy Middle

by RegalPixieDust



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, OQ Prompt Party, OQ Prompt Party 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 22:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalPixieDust/pseuds/RegalPixieDust
Summary: Monday's entry for OQ Prompt Party. Prompt 124: Robin helps Regina see light in the darkness.After Regina sacrifices herself to save her son, she finds herself in a world between life and death. Who better to help her move on than her soulmate?





	A Happy Middle

**Author's Note:**

> My Monday entry for OQ Prompt Party 2018. A huge thank you to Brittany for not only being my muse for this one but for being my rock the last few days. You have gone above and beyond and my thank you is this fic.

Her eyes snapped open moments ago and she inhaled sharply after her sudden appearance in the middle of the road. The air tastes different on her tongue. It tingles her lungs in a new way, so she knows it’s not the home she conjured up once upon a time, but she’s standing in the middle of Main Street in an outfit she never would have dreamt of donning here. Her hair is short and curly, just like she remembers styling it in the morning. Her Def Leppard shirt is flapping against her leather jacket in the cold wind barrelling against her. Her Hyperion Heights persona might have been concerned with coming across as unique and stylish, but protecting herself from the elements wasn’t a direct concern.

Her memories are hazy. She remembers Henry laying on the ground and an abominable feeling of hopelessness deep in her gut. She remembers yelling, hands grasping onto her body, and then it all went black, matching the sky above her. There’s a velvet darkness blanket strewn over high above her now, the most obsidian she’s ever seen it.

She circles once to catch a glimpse of anyone who could tell her where she is, a direction she should go, but there are no street lights to guide her way, only the dazzling stream of moonlight illuminating the patio of Granny’s far off in the distance.

She chooses to walk towards it, taking it to be a sign, wobbling a little in her boots at she sets off on her stride. She climbs the few steps to the front door and peers into the window quickly. There a faint brightness but it appears empty at first glance, so she steps inside.

“Hello?” she asks.

The deafening silence shatters when the door rattles closed behind her and the source of the dim light is shown to be from three candles set in the middle of a booth, a booth she remembers sitting in many a time. Henry had his first milkshake in that booth. She and Robin would link their fingers over the plastic sheen of the tabletop in that booth. Her fondest memories with Snow occurred in this very room.

She steps over towards the light and inspects the candles - they’re freshly lit, the wicks barely burned and the wax newly melted.

A creak sounds in front of her, coming from the back of the diner, just shy of the powerless jukebox. “Who’s there?”

Then he steps out for her to see. His red scarf is hanging loosely around his neck, the rugged jacket she would always tease him about dressing his shoulders. And suddenly she can’t take a breath.

Robin walks towards her slowly, his boots barely making a sound, until he’s directly in front of her. He takes her hands, both of them, and brings them up to hold against his chest. He warms her chilled fingers, even blows a hot breath against them and she shudders a laugh.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispers into the small space between them.

Inhaling, she notes how his scent is still sweet with a lingering hint of pine, and mutters a simple, “Sorry I’m late,” back to him, smirking sparsely at how the tone of those words lack the iniquity they once used to.

For what feels like a lifetime, they stay quiet. Her hands bake sweetly in the comfort of his hands and they take the time to remember. She’d been dreaming of this moment for longer than she could even say and having him in front of her again is causing her heart to flutter, but a pit to grow in her stomach. She doesn’t know how long she has with him.

His eyes are the same lustrous blue that she swore she would never forget. He hasn’t changed an ounce in her eyes, though she can hardly imagine the same applies to him. He lets her hands go and weaves his fingers into her much shorter, much curlier hair. “I like it,” he notes. “It suits you.” He leans back and eyes her up and down. “The clothes, however, are odd,” he teases, and she all but snorts and drops her forehead against his chest.

“It’s a long story,” she tells him, not even sure where she’d begin if he asked.

When she lifts her head to look back up at him, he’s smiling brightly with a twinkle in his eye. “I very much want to kiss you right now.”

Her breath hitches in her throat, the build up of moisture glistening in the corners of her eyes. “I’ll be furious if you don’t.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” His hands cup her cheeks and he lowers his lips towards her, barely giving her time to whisper her tearful _nope_.

It’s gentler than gentle but it might as well have been a kiss as if their life depended on it. The feeling of his short stubble against her skin as he pulls her closer draws a whimper of a moan from her chest. Her hands press against his middle, her palms gliding around and under his jacket until she fists the fabric tightly at the base of his spine.

Nothing in any realm could have prepared her for the softness of it or the rush of every moment they ever shared suddenly flowing through her veins like small tickles of electricity.

They pull apart against the magnetic lure to each other, and Robin nudges his nose against hers, presses their foreheads together and in tandem they inhale and exhale heavily. Years of waiting finally over.

“Sit,” he encourages softly, a hot breath brushing against her nose, before he’s taking a step back and offering her the chance to slip into the booth first.

She slides up to the wall and leans against it, using her hands to pull his arm in next to her and she cosies up close. “Where are we?” she asks. “The Underworld?

“No,” he soothes, pressing his lips against her forehead and lingering for a second. “It’s more of an in-between. Many things changed after Hades’ reign.”

She scowls at the mention of the demon who stole him from her and sits up straight to face him directly, thousands of questions in her mind that were desperate to be answered.  

Before she can pinpoint which one to ask, Robin questions, “What do you remember?”

She sinks into the booth a bit, feeling her weight as she tries to remember as much as she can. “I just remember feeling desperate. Like there was something I _had_ to do.” With her eyes clenched shut, she painfully recalls the loud voices calling out to her, seeing Henry lying on the ground at her feet, her newly found family looking on in anguish. “Henry…”

“You gave your life for his,” Robin confirms, letting his fingers glide down her arm until they link with hers on the table.

She remembers it clearly now. The curse had broken and Henry’s life was taken just as feared. All it took was the look on Lucy’s face for Regina to offer her own life in order to save her son. “I couldn’t let his story end like that, not after he went so far to find it.”

She didn’t even realise the tears were building up in her eyes before they started to fall, one aching drop at a time.

Robin pulses a soft squeeze against her hand and with admiration he states, “You were always an exceptional mother. Until the very end.”

“I’m really dead,” she half-laughs. Obviously it was her immediate thought, but somewhere deep in her gut she was hoping that maybe this was all just a bad dream. Then the thought dawns on her and she asks, “Have you been stuck here this whole time?”

“No,” he stresses quickly, squeezes her hand once again. “I moved on many years ago, but I was sent back here to help you find your way.”

“With my unfinished business,” she assumes.

Robin shakes his head, “It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid.”

She scoffs lightly, “Of course it isn’t.”

“What do you think your unfinished business is?”

Staring straight ahead, she rattles her brain for what it might be. And while she knows that most people struggle to figure out what truly plagues them, she’s suckerpunched by the large number of possibilities. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I did so many horrible things. It would take me an eternity to apologise to the people I’ve hurt.”

“Your father thought you would say that,” Robin murmurs. That grabs her attention, though he leaves her little time to interrogate. “Unfinished business isn’t as literal as you might think. It’s rooted in your soul. It’s not just a case of righting a wrong or fixing a mistake. It all stems from within your mind and what you perceive as things left unfinished or to be corrected.”

“Then what _is_ my unfinished business?”

“Don’t you see?” He asks softly, barely a whisper. “Regina, you don’t have any…”

She scoffs through a disbelieving laugh. Robin has always been that voice of reason and unconditional love, but sometimes she thinks he just remains blissfully ignorant. “That’s not possible.”

“You resent the mistakes you’ve made, sure, everybody does it. But you quite literally turned your entire life around. You went from villain to hero and you’ve spent years trying to make up for all the wrong you did. Even to a point where you were willing to give your entire existence for the person you love the most. You even said it yourself, true love is -”

“Sacrifice,” she finishes, remembering those very words falling from her lips moments after losing him.

“Any debt you think you owe, you’ve paid it. Over and over,” his voice is extremely sincere, more than she’s ever heard it before. Every word is cushioned with truth and envelops her carefully. “I’m here to help you see that, even if it doesn’t feel right. You are worthy of moving on, and I will sit right here with you until you believe that to be true and then we’ll go together.”

Her eyes are stinging again as she fiercely fights back anymore tears. “What’s it like?” She clears her throat. “Where you’ve been.”

“It’s quite like the real world, actually,” he says. “We have day to day lives. I’ve been able to reunite with many I never thought I’d see again and I’ve met many people from _your_ life, people who love you. Your father is an exceptional man.”

“You mentioned him before,” she notes. “He’s safe?”

“He is,” Robin promises. “Everyone is.”

“Marian too?”

He smiles fondly, a small twitch of his lips that always makes her weak in the knees. “She’s as perfect as ever. She even found love again in a way that is rather poetic when you consider the entire scope of things.” She tilts her head in confusion, eager for his explanation. “Our first love’s seem to have found love again, just like we did, with each other.”

“They did?” she asks, her smile bright and wide, and her attention entirely focussed on the next words that fall from his lips, and of course he has the nerve to only then offer her an affirmative nod that brings a chuckle to the surface.

“He’s excited to see you,” Robin tells her.

That kind of news should have made her heart flutter, but instead she feels a weight. “I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would make up for the way I trapped him.”

“He’s doesn’t want an apology,” Robin mumbles against another kiss to the side of her head. “He told you once before that he wanted you to find love again and now he wants you to realise how much you deserve to love _yourself_ enough to not bear any weight or guilt.”

“Do you really believe that I have nothing to be sorry for?” Regina asks him, staring at him for any hesitation and there isn’t any.

“I believe that with my entire soul.” Regina sighs heavily, nodding and slowly accepting that he may be right. He surprises her by standing suddenly, holding our his hand for her. “You know, we never did get to finish that walk in the moonlight. Would you care to join me?”

“Perhaps,” she drawls, echoing herself from years ago, and she takes his hand and gives into the way he easily pulls her upright until she closely pressed against his front.

“Allow me,” he smirks and wraps his arms tightly around her, and they are engulfed in a large cloud of forest green smoke.

When he releases her, she frantically looks around and finds them in the middle of the forest, surrounded by high trees and a scent Robin could easily be lost in.

“New party trick?” Regina asks with an eyebrow raised, and Robin very proudly shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. “Where are we?” she asks, taking his offered hand before he starts guiding her between the trees.

“I have been wanting to bring you back here since after that alternative universe malarkey,” he says as he weaves her amongst the tall pillars. There is a small fire burning in front of a log she once sat down on when she felt like her entire life was in shambles. The first place Robin ever sweetly invaded her space in Storybrooke. He made her smile for the first time in what felt like months that day. “I was going to bring you here after our walk and tell you that I love you.”

She remembers how he kept making his way towards the entrance of the forest a few times that night on their walk, but he kept retreating, then they were so rudely interrupted by that swirl of darkness that threatened to separate them once more. “I was too nervous,” he confesses.

Regina sits on the log, taking him along with her by a pull of his hand. “Do it now.”

“Yeah?” he asks shyly.

“Yeah.”

He clears his throat and prepares, his cheeks a bright rosy colour in the warmth of the fire. “Regina Mills,” he smiles timidly. “I have been enticed by you since the moment you refused my hand in the Enchanted Forest, been entirely smitten with you since the day you turned down my day time drink, and completely and hopelessly in love with you since the day you trusted me with the one treasure I never had to steal.”

“Wow,” she shudders through a watery smile and glistening eyes.

“And a woman who can do all of that to a mere man like me is crazy to think that she isn’t deserving of moving on to a better place,” he adds ardently. “You’re not the person that you fear you are. You are my soulmate, a wonderful mother, a strong heart. The things that you think are flaws are the reasons we all love you.”

“I really made up for it all?”

“More than you know.”

She allows herself to believe that for a moment, and the weightlessness that consumes her body is intoxicating. She falls into the feeling, spiralling into Robin’s belief in her, and from behind his shoulder, Regina catches the glimmer of a bright light. It’s faint at first, easily mistaken for a flashlight or the headlight of Emma’s ridiculous death can, but then it grows and grows.

It’s huge and exhilarating and warmth spreads through her chest. “I think I see it.”

“I know. I can see it in your eyes,” he’s smiling sweetly, standing up with a face full of pride. “Are you ready?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she confides, and with the brightness ahead of them and his hand in hers, she stays planted in place for one more moment. “This isn’t exactly what I thought my happy ending would be.”

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “This isn’t your happy ending. Not yet. Being reunited with your entire family, _that’s_ your happy ending. Until that day, this can just be our happy middle.”

Together they step forward and stand a foot short of the gateway to the middle of their story. “Will Henry be okay?”

“You raised him, he’s going to be more than okay,” Robin nods, stepping in front of her and facing her dead on. He takes both of her hands like he did in the diner and holds them close to his chest again. He walks backwards, slowly, guiding them closer until they are almost completely engulfed in the light.

“Ready for a new adventure?” Robin asks.

And for the first time in forever, she actually thinks she might be.


End file.
